


Questions

by hop_reads_it



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Angst?, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Pillow Talk, Post-Canon, Scars, soft angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 16:30:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16141124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hop_reads_it/pseuds/hop_reads_it
Summary: “Is there anything you want to ask me?” Truth be told, she did have a question, one that she’d been holding onto since they were teenagers in her father’s house.





	Questions

“Is there anything you want to ask me?”

As she heard the words, Riza felt them in Roy’s breath on her face. Even before she opened her eyes to look at him, she knew he was mere inches away. She smiled to herself as she beheld him, and although he returned it his eyebrows were gently pressing together. 

“Why do you ask?” Riza asked, shifting on the bed so that she could intertwine her legs with his. 

“Well I was thinking there’s a lot of stuff we don’t know about each other.” 

“Roy, there’s also a lot that we do know about each other. We’ve known each other since we were teenagers.” 

“I don’t even know your favorite color!” Roy said hurriedly, and Riza struggled not to laugh. 

“Okay, well my favorite color is purple, like the wildflowers that were always the first to bloom.” Riza replied. “What about you?”

Roy blinked before speaking. “Uh, I’m not really sure. I didn’t really think about it.” 

Riza wrinkled her nose at him. “Well that’s not very fair, is it?” He smiled, and she continued. “Okay, well, what’s a food you can’t stand?”

“Cheesecake.” This time, Roy’s answer came immediately. “It’s the worst. Everyone says it’s so good, but the texture is so gross! And no matter how you slice it, cheese shouldn’t be sweet. It’s savoury and anyone who tries to feed you cheese as a dessert is not to be trusted.”

Riza laughed. “I didn’t know you had such strong feelings about cheesecake.” At that, she supposed he was right. Although they had combined their strength to accomplish their goal, they didn’t really have much time along the way to talk about little things, or the more personal things. 

“Oh absolutely.” Roy straightened his face, but Riza could see a twinkle in his eyes. “When I become fuhrer, I plan to outlaw it.” Riza laughed again, and Roy lifted his head off the pillow to quickly kiss her on the forehead. He reached down to pick up her hands in his, enveloping them. “Hmmm, I can’t think of a question, do you have anything?”

Riza’s smile faded as she began to bite her lip. Truth be told, she did have a question, one that she’d been holding onto since they were teenagers in her father’s house. It would be a little more personal than asking about his least favorite food, but he had said she could ask anything. Her hands slipped out of his and traced the length of the thin scar that ran down the length of his forearm, from the inside of his wrist to the outside of his elbow. She knew the stories for many of his scars, and she had been there when many of those stories were made, but he had had this one before they met. It’s thin as a string, barely noticeable except when struck in the right lighting. Riza could remember watching Roy the apprentice copying down alchemical notes, the scar seeming to appear and disappear as his hand glided over the page. Now, she could feel the scar as an imperfection on his warm skin. 

“How…” She trailed off. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to ask, in case it unraveled a history Roy would rather forget. She had encountered self-harm scars before, on friends and colleagues in the military. She wasn’t a stranger to the desire, especially after Ishval, but she’d been lucky in that she’d been able to abstain. But what about Roy? Had he fallen prey to desire, and if so, what happened? This was from before he had even joined the military, so what had done this to him? 

Riza took a breath. “How did you get this?” She pressed down gently on the scar. 

Roy’s face twitched in what seemed like a grimace. He lifted his arm up to look at it, and Riza let go. 

“This scar…” Roy studied it before looking at Riza. “It’s… actually a pretty funny story.”

Riza let out her breath and stared at him, perplexed. He began to smile, amused at her confusion. “Wh-what do you mean?” She asked. 

“Well, when I was growing up with Madame Christmas, there was a neighbor in the house next to us who had a fishpond in his front yard.” Roy began. “He’d always been there, and he’d always had fish. I could look between the gaps in the fence and see the little pond, and I could see that he had chicken wire over the top to keep the alley cats from getting to his fish, but I couldn’t see the actual fish.”

Riza couldn’t help herself from interrupting. “Then how did you know there were fish in the pond?”

Roy raised an eyebrow and smirked mischievously. “Well, I had a hunch, but I was never completely sure.” He shifted to lie on his back, freeing his hands from the blanket to gesticulate while he spoke, turning to look at Riza. “Until one day, when I was eleven, the neighbor moved out. I seized upon the opportunity immediately, and the afternoon after he left, I snuck over the fence into his lawn. I kept an eye out for trouble as I went to the pond, but once I was there I was completely focused on my mission. I looked down through the chicken wire, and lo and behold there were fish in the pond! They were small, only two or three inches long, and I wanted to know if I could catch one.”

Riza could feel the smile returning to her lips as he set the scene, picturing young eleven-year-old Roy looking down into the fishpond. She had never seen any photos of him as a child, so in her mind he looked a lot like a scaled-down version of adult Roy. 

“I carefully picked up the chicken wire, holding it up with one hand as I reached down with the other to scoop up a fish. Of course, it isn’t really as easy as cats make it look, and I missed. I missed a few more times until I caught one, a fat little white-and-orange fish. I was amazed, and I watched it flop around in my hand when suddenly I heard Madame Christmas yelling for me for dinner. I panicked and dropped the fish and the chicken wire all at once and-” Roy twisted his arm so that Riza could see the scar again. “-the edge got me. You know, chicken wire is a lot sharper than it looks.”

Roy was frowning slightly at the scar, as though cursing the sharpness of chicken wire, and Riza leaned over to kiss his cheek. “You’re a silly man, Roy Mustang.”


End file.
